Explore modern and cheap solutions for creating a true 21st century classroom in our latest guest post from Jessica Sanders of Learn2Earn.org.
Classroom tools make your job easier and learning more fun for students. And while there are more than enough free tools available to teachers, some of the best ones cost a little bit of money. Check out these five apps, many of which are also available for free, to see why they’re worth the minimal cost.
This app, available for Android, iPhone and iPad, makes it easy to not only collect attendance information, but get a quick data overview at any point during the school year.
You can add notes for each day’s attendance record, making it easy to look back and quickly extract important information from your records, and email parents directly from the app if you find that a student has been absent or tardy frequently.
Encourage your students to read more, both in class and at home, with this interactive, online reading log. After logging reading, students are automatically prompted to answer one Common Core-aligned comprehension question. They earn Wisdom Coins for logging reading and answering questions—they use these to buy virtual accessories for their Owlvatar. The more they earn, the more they can buy in the Owl Store; a surprising motivator.
While this tool makes reading fun for students, it also allows teachers to assess the reading comprehension of their students. Lexile Scores are integrated into the platform, and teachers can see how this score fluctuates for each student and the class as a whole with simple, glance-and-go graphs. At just $5 a month, this a classroom tool worth using.
Oftentimes, students struggle with homework when they don’t have their teacher there to help them work through it. With Educreations, you can record your lessons and easily share them with students and parents to be used as a reference for studying or nightly homework. This can also be a valuable tool for snow days or when students are out sick—no one has an excuse to miss a lesson.
While there is a free version, the next step up costs less than $10 a month and offers far more storage, advanced tools and the ability to export the videos you upload.
Use this classroom tool to distribute assignments and resources to students, collect their homework and projects, and grade everything that’s handed in. Yes, you can do all of that with just one app. You can also create 30-minute voice notes and 10-minute videos for students to access.
The tool is available in free, premium teacher and premium school versions, but the premium teacher may add the most value to your classroom with minimal restrictions. If you want to keep all online work, resources and notes in one place, this is a worthwhile purchase.
Make your lesson planning more fun with this easy-to-use tool. With PlanbookEdu you can create clear, custom lesson plans, and add a variety of attachments including documents, videos and images. The most important feature: this tool is integrated with Common Core so you can check to make sure your lessons are covering important anchors and topics.
Use the share feature to send your lesson plans to your peers or administrators or export and print them to share during a face-to-face meeting. The tool is also in the Google Apps Marketplace, so it will blend seamlessly with the other GAFE programs you use.
While free teacher tools are ideal, some great products cost just a small amount of money. Consider whether a $5 or $10 monthly payment could make your job easier and your lessons more exciting.
Bio: Jessica Sanders is the Director of Social Outreach for Learn2Earn, an online fundraising platform that allows students to raise money by reading books. She grew up reading books like The Giver and Holes, and is passionate about making reading as exciting for young kids today as it has always been for her. Follow Learn2Earn on Twitter and Facebook, and send content inquiries to social@learn2earn.org.